Let me start with apologizing for my lack of official update since before the Ducky Regatta Festival at the end of June! First & foremost, THANK YOU so much to all who came out, showed support, sponsored, splashed in the river, caught/wrangled/bought/sold/squeaked rubber duckies, etc.! It was a beautiful day in support of a good cause, and we couldn’t have done it without each of you! The days following the event we were grateful to find rest and refocus, and somehow now we’re already heading back to school!
One thing I’ve been spending time working on since I last wrote to you, and am excited to share now, is our new and improv(ing)ed website! And, the beginning of this August newsletter note from me to you, will serve as the very first Casting Bread Blog Post! You can find many more to come by visiting the BLOG tab on our website: increasefoodsecurity.org
I hope this Blog can serve as a place for you, our loyal supporters, to be able stay up to date on the happenings around the Pantry & Café. But also, as a place to collect and celebrate some of the stories told around our kitchen table. Storytelling in an important and longstanding Appalachian tradition which has helped mold our mountain communities and it is so important to preserve this art form. Listening to, and amplifying, real stories from the lives of the most vulnerable people in our community, can lead us to the root causes of their challenges. We know that as humans we tend to fear the things we do not understand, so the natural remedy for this is to cultivate the growth of understanding between us.
One of the most magical things I have experienced since coming to Casting Bread, is the incredible phenomenon that occurs when people enter this space and seem to forget all of the ways that we are different from each other. Political affiliations, age, gender, religious denominations, socioeconomic groups and more, are all things we often choose to define ourselves by. Sometimes we even use these things to divide us from our neighbors, our friends or our families. When we deem someone as too "different" from us and assume they won't possibly be able to relate to our experiences, we close a door that may have led somewhere beautiful. In this place I have made friends (and some I even call family now) with very different backgrounds, politics, finances, religious experiences, etc. than myself, and my life has only been enriched by these relationships and the new perspectives they bring. In this place, we find those things that will brings us closer together in understanding and love. When we listen to those whose paths have been so very different from our own, compassion begins to grow.
This is the magic of food, compassion and community. This is one of the ways that I believe God shows up through all of us, but whether you call it God, or kindness, or empathy or something else entirely, doesn't matter here. I have begun to see that at Casting Bread the food we share is the tool we use to take the first step in the three step process of our mission. Everyone needs food, compassion and community and when people come here for food and then are met with so much compassion, they almost always choose to come back time and again to become a part of our community. This is why volunteers have become staff, staff have been clients, clients have become dedicated volunteers, staff and board members and these definitions we wear become more blurred and less and less relevant.
So, thank you all for being here. Thank you for following along and for being a part of our community. We love you so much!
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